Web sales up 8% January over January, MyBuys index finds

By Bill SiwickiEditor, Mobile

Revenue from full-priced items increased 22%.

Total e-commerce sales increased 8% in January compared with January 2010 while revenue from full-priced items was up a considerable 22% for the same period, according to the MyBuys E-commerce Wellness Index, which measures the overall health of U.S. e-commerce and tracks key trends among retailers. The index is based on sales and other figures from 300 retailer clients of MyBuys Inc., a personalization and product recommendations technology provider.

These increases drove the index up 18% compared to the same month one year ago. MyBuys also attributes January e-commerce health improvements to a 15% decrease in the number of orders that included sale items. Further, the average depth of discount dropped from 28.5% to 26%.

“E-commerce continues to be the fuel of retail by marketing relevant products to people, which positively impacts industry health and revenue,” says Robert Cell, CEO of MyBuys. “To start the year last year, the health of the industry declined just over 10%, where this year it increased 8%. This supports our forecasting around vast retail improvements in 2011 that can be attributed to continued trends in decreased discounting, increased consumer confidence and retailers returning to positive growth.”

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The January 2011 index also demonstrates the effects of personalization on e-commerce. Retailers saw an 18% increase in average order value for personalized transactions compared to sales without personalization, the index finds.

The MyBuys E-commerce Wellness Index is a monthly measure based on data from the e-retailer clients of MyBuys. The study covers MyBuys clients that were active both in January 2011 and January 2010. The index seeks to measure the health of e-retailing by aggregating total sales, non-promoted sales, discounted sales performance, depth of discounts and average order value.